It was billed as a party to celebrate the one-year anniversary of California's first legal same-sex marriages that occurred last June 16. Nearly 50 people sang songs, prayed, and ate cake at a ceremony held at the First Unitarian Universalist Church Tuesday night on San Francisco's Cathedral Hill.

But for those 18,000 couples that married before a slim majority of voters in November put an end to the weddings, there was little to celebrate. They now find themselves part of a select group that has marriage rights unavailable to other LGBT couples.

"It is sort of a bittersweet feeling," said San Francisco resident Catherine Archbold, 54, who married her partner of 28 years, Lin Murphy, also 54, last August.

Murphy said the couple decided to mark the occasion of the first weddings because they feel a need to join the fight to repeal Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage and was recently upheld by the state Supreme Court. They also hoped the event would help them reconcile their feelings about being in a select group of married same-sex couples.

"It is time to get involved. We've been on the back burner, so it is good to participate in this," said Murphy. "I feel being part of the lucky ones to have married we have a duty to share the wealth."

Greg Stewart, the senior minister of the Unitarian Church, married his partner of 28 years, Stillman Stewart, last November 2, two days prior to the election. Waking up the morning of November 5 to see that Prop 8 had passed, he said his "gut instinct" was to dissolve his marriage.

"My first thought when this happened was we should get divorced so we aren't enjoying this right that others don't enjoy," he said. "I am still struggling with the fact that we have created these haves and have-nots in our community."

Rather than file for divorce, Stewart decided to join with other people of faith who have pledged not to conduct weddings until all of their parishioners have the right to marry. While some are merely refusing to sign marriage licenses, thus making couples go to city officials to have their weddings legalized, others such as Stewart are no longer officiating over any kind of commitment ceremonies.

"Most of my congregation understands the significance of this issue and the need to do whatever it takes to overturn Prop 8," said Stewart. "It is disappointing that I cannot marry people in my congregation."

Partners of seven years, Yara Harman, 35, and Anne Marks, 33, married last October 30, the same day as Harman's birthday. They said they rushed to hold the ceremony prior to the election, fearing then that Prop 8 would pass.

"I feel we were pressured to do it because of the reality it wouldn't go our way," said Harman.

Like other LGBT people who married last summer and early fall, Harman also described the situation as "bittersweet."

"I am overjoyed to think about one year ago today. But that happiness is tinged with sadness," added Marks.

The couple finds little comfort in having wed knowing that other gay and lesbian couples are now banned from marrying.

"It makes me feel worse," said Marks, adding that every wedding she has attended since last fall "doesn't feel right."

Michael Weiss, a deputy city attorney, said in a phone interview that he and his husband, Douglas Lee, have wrestled with the unique nature of their wedding status. They, too, describe their marriage on October 31 as a "shotgun wedding" rushed into due to the likelihood of Prop 8's passage.

"We wanted to gauge what was happening with Prop 8. Being a lawyer myself, I know that marriage is not a contract you enter into lightly," said Weiss, who worked on the city's historic lawsuit that led to the court's initial ruling in May 2008 overturning the state's anti-same-sex marriage statutes. "I was reticent and concerned about entering into an unknown situation. This was something that could leave us in limbo if Prop 8 did pass."

Ultimately, Weiss and Lee decided it would be harder for the court to invalidate the same-sex marriages that did took place if they were faced with dissolving thousands, rather than dozens, of marriages.

"In some respects we feel relief we accomplished what we wanted to do. It was good to have 18,000 marriages at issue versus 10," said Weiss. "It would have been far easier for them to nullify or transmute or whatever they were looking to do ... if the numbers had been much lower. We were successful in that respect."

The court's decision to not invalidate the marriages, however, brought little solace, said Weiss.

"It seems like a Pyrrhic victory; kind of an empty victory. If we can get married and our marriage is recognized, but our friends who did not for whatever reason cannot, that feels arbitrary," he said. "We have talked about it. At the moment we stand for the change that is inevitably going to come."